BU Research Blog

On Thursday BU Professor Jonathan Parker delivered a plenary address to I Convegno Internazionale ‘Social Work Education’ Innovazioni ed Esperienze (The International Conference on Social Work Education: Innovations and experiences) in Milan, Italy. Having represented the UK higher education sector when vice chair of the Joint University Council Social Work Education Committee body and drawing on wide research, knowledge and experience of the reforms in English social work education he presented the dangers of replicating England’s changes before introducing innovations that offset some of the risks.

In an effort to ‘raise the quality’ of social work education, and to respond cynically to popular pressure, successive UK Governments, particularly in England, have imposed standards and regulatory frameworks that have curtailed the capacity of universities to educate students according to their specialist interests and research areas. Rather than focusing on pedagogy, universities have allowed employer organisations to set the agenda. They have increasingly restricted their curricula and by so doing have co-created, with various governments, a social work that is predominantly concerned with protection and safeguarding. Addressing a wide audience including the current president of the International Association of Schools of Social Work, Professor Annamaria Campanini, Jonathan Parker focused on the dangers of transferring these models and replicating them rather than promoting social justice and relational social work practice. He called for education that championed passion and joy in teaching and learning, was student-centred and actively challenged the corporate homogenisation of education. He suggested a focus on ethnographic practice in education, learning and onward into social work practice could offer a way forward and was needed.

Two other British academics, Professor Peter Beresford and Dr Pamela Trevithick, provided plenary sessions on service user involvement in education and relational skills. The conference was keen to learn about the innovations in and the problems of the English sector and to promote relationship skills and wisdom not the rigid application of standards that have crossed into higher education from the adoption of neoliberal market practices.

Jonathan Parker